My MFA Poetry Thesis, May 2012

 (hard to reproduce the format here, but you'll get the drift. continuing to share what it is I do and have done with you.)

The Intelligence of Memory

Molly Daniels

© 2012

For all of us who live to the other side of silence.

“Memory is like            a

               shifting          collage,

             a narrative                          spun out of  scraps     and

             constructed        anew            

                              whenever  recollection       takes place.”

                   Kathleen McGowan

he tells me it’s obvious i’m inexperienced. i don’t tell him pushing my head under his sleeping bag is disconcerting.

i accuse the boy i’m dating of leaving so quickly after sex that he forgot his shoes. he tells me i’d insisted the night before that they were mine, and wore them home.

they wheel another college student into the ward. he’s chanting, Do not go gently into that good night! and i think bemusedly, i could do this for a while.

  

the poem i want to write has the word nipple in it   it won’t be taut or blushed   just nipple, right there   because you know how it tastes   the slight give of density between teeth and under the ply of your tongue

 when they knock on my dorm and pull me out of bed, i have to take my retainer out first.

She drops a carton of cereal. It splatters against the baseboards. She pauses, and begins to wail as though the o’s are all the things she cannot manage. I reach to the sink with a sudden glass and open the tap. Oxygen bubbles cloud it. I hold it out to her and she shakes her soggy head, It’s dirty. I tell her it’s just the bubbles. She hiccups and insists, No, it’s dirty. I fill another glass.

 months later, a friend will tell me the only coherent thing i said that day was, i only feel normal when i’m drunk.

my breath comes short   and shallow in gasps of clinging—No—clutching—No—manic tantrum thrashes—No!   i cannot let this go   i need this   them   his   i need you to make me better   i need you to make me feel better   adore me   touch me   writhe on top of me   so in that suspension   i can feel alive   writhe on top of me  so in that suspension   i can feel alive   your breath comes short  and shallow in gasps of clinging—Yes—clutching—Yes—manic tantrum thrashes—Yes!  malleate me   pound me   beat me out of myself   so i can be in the quiet   beat me out of myself    so i can be in the quiet

the other patients will tell me they assumed it was heroin because of the jutting hipbones.

and because neither of us know what we’re doing, i don’t know my discomfort is his finger in the wrong hole.

 my first time is an apology. he puts on his shoes when he’s done.

 he comes over at 3am sweating booze. it burns as he pushes in from behind.

 the scent of day lilies cloys the air. they're supposed to rot in dirt.

this could be anything you’d forget   or anything you remember   this could be the thing you’d always remember   but isn’t at all how you remember it   this could be the  experience you wish you had   the experience you did have   or the experience you’d wanted to have   but now that it’s happening   you’re wishing it were different   wish it were more   you wish you knew what came next 

 i’ve skidded out on just-damp pavement. the cutlass nose-deep in a copse of trees. i can’t get my fingers to steady around my cigarette. the hicktown cops make quite a show of marching me into their holding cell.

 My mother taught three special topics courses at a university in the 90s. Psychology of Fashion (special emphasis on fetish fashion); Barbie on the Couch, a Psychoanalytic Perspective (final projects produced several mutilated dolls); and Female Serial Killers (surprisingly few; generally preferring poison).

 She tells me she realized if she twisted just one more inch, she’d break his arm. He stutters from the time he is verbal.

crocuses like periscopes through snow   skeleton stakes of tomato plants   a brick
patio swims in a decade of oak and maple leaves

 We sit on a bench outside the outlet mall. She wears black pleather pants. I have a cigarette. She’d rather I didn’t but she smoked when she was my age. The other two are inside some men’s store. She asks how my summer away was and a cute boy walks by and looks toward us on the bench. She says that he’s cute. That she’s been emailing with a nineteen year old somewhere in the middle states. That she was going to buy a plane ticket to go out and see him. I don’t remember where. I’m glad to have the numbing thrum of adderall to push the din of rage and panic back behind my collarbone. At the last minute she decided not to go. I tell her not to hit on any of the guys I thought were cute too. She laughs. I examine the filter. My dad walks out of the store. 

 my lips travel down his body and freeze to a sudden stop at his waistband. flashbacks blind my retinas and i cling to his thigh, barely breathing in the dark. he tells me that it’s okay, that we can just have sex, instead.

 my mom later tells me she came to see me once, but i don’t remember. she tells me i was zonked out on meds, and her voice trails off, and she gets this terrified look in her eyes.

 my dad’s first wife, i was told, ended up in bellevue. now she lives in brooklyn.

 when getting honest about the amphetamines, my mom tells me her therapist insisted she come see him 7 days a week, or be committed.

 my therapist leans forward in earnest. you do know you’ve had a breakdown, right?

 i meet with a student who tells me not to take split-level poetry because all the under-grads write about is date rape – so i don’t tell him about the drunken carride from two strangers, later finding an earring twisted into my shirt, or being turned away from four Korean hospitals because rape is not an emergency.

i read an article on how to snag a man which suggests that women think about something naughty when out because women won’t pick up on it, but the men will – so, i imagine licking pre-cum from a cock, which provides a lascivious revolt against public decorum and not undamp panties.

but, in the unwalled house of my memory, these situations sometimes mix – and the salt sours, the armor rebuilds, and the currency of reality cripples.

i can’t let you be nice to me    you skim and caress and   i can’t take it   you are gentle and whisper   and   no   not here   there is nothing breathing here   just do it   take it   please don’t honor this   please  i am going to break   Please   kindness does not belong in here

 i hold my palm against all the objects i’ve piled in the center of my room and ask them each where they belong.

 i’ve removed the velvet cloak from my stuffed bunny. with my now-shaved head, we are both naked and new.

 he sounds like an impostor every time he recites the blessing over the shabbat candles. as if crossing the border of religion frees him of his past, or gives him access to ours.

 he hurls his words: you look like your mother. that night, i simply shave it all off.

i’m on that electric walkway at the airport. its moving along beneath me, but i’ve lost my footing, and its dragging me, scraping me apart as others stand so calmly heading toward their future.

 the doctor stares at his clipboard, a few pages up-turned in his hand. he glances vaguely

toward me – i hear there’s something about your hair?

 afterward, he tells me he wants to take me out, like to dinner. i ask why. he tells me he likes me, wants to get to know me. i stop answering his calls.

 my dad grips the arms of a green plastic chair. his knuckles are white. i’m not angry at you, he spits, i’m angry at your disease.

i cannot let this go   him   them   what will i be without this fractured electricity whirling around my body   who will i be without you to bring me to life   how will i know myself?   in the morning   i remember the Beatles.  i hear them deep within my story  and as i listen   i remember:  I love the Beatles   i love to laugh at my own jokes   i’d love to embrace fully   without savage tongues  or suspended reality  i find myself to be a woman   scared   scarred  and  beautiful.  and it is this constant   this one  unalterable  truth about myself   that enables me for one unguarded moment  to lean over the edge of uncertainty   to spread my arms   and fall in

 huddled on the closet floor, phone clutched to my ear, my friend tells me: i’m thinking
of checking out a meeting.

this is the feeling of your arm tight around my ribcage   this is the feeling of your thigh soft beneath mine   i sense my consciousness escaping   it’s not safe to be here   exposed   from so much more than clothes   this is the feeling of your heartbeat  gentle against my back   this is the feeling of your lips   pressed sleepy at my shoulder   i want to detach   to run away from myself   to leave my body  leave just two bodies   base  discardable   this is the feeling of your hand twining firmly into mine   this is the feeling of my body melting into yours   but i   am human   and you   are human   naked and safe   here  i breathe

this could be the time you get it right   the time you remember there is no right   this time you don’t wish it were any different   and you don’t come back for more.

“I lived there once.”

An odd line of thought and conversation has been happening lately. Mostly including the term “OkCupid.” …

Dating. What does dating look like in post-cancerland? Do you tell people? Is it a first date thing, a second, an on-your-profile thing? What does your profile look like, when you have just one or two accurate photos of the new length of your hair, that despite the rave compliments and an honest thank you, still feels weird to acknowledge? Does it “matter?” and yet how can it not?

Does it have relevance to the woman I am today, the woman I may present to people I’m just meeting? I don’t tell people, usually, anymore. Although, yesterday as I checked out my groceries at Trader Joes, the teller was very taken with the “early Mia Farrow” ‘do, asking if it was the first time I’d cut it like that, and I answered, Well, I didn’t really have a choice – I lost it. He looked confused, and said laughingly, What, you mean it fell out? And I said, with a smile, still playing the “up”ness of the interaction, Yes. It fell out. It was quite an ordeal. And his smile fell off his face, as he understood.

So, I don’t tell people. Why do that? But, isn’t it an integral part of who I am, and what I’ve lived through in my life? Just as the facts that I don’t drink or smoke anymore, that I’m from New Jersey, and that I lived in Korea for two years? But it’s different. It’s differently weighted. I would put on my profile that I don’t drink, I think I have in the past, or it usually comes up at least in passing on a first date – if it’s a good one. What do you reveal about yourself? What is relevant? And really, does and how does this mean something about me?

Is cancer part of who I am, or is it just a large desolate city I drove through once, and remember, but didn’t take any souvenirs? Have souvenirs hitch-hiked with me? Have I taken on bits of the town that color how I continue to move forward? – Well, to that, the answer is certainly Yes (I am not playing instruments, softball, or working out again because I thought they were good ideas [they were good ideas pre-cancer] – I’m doing them because they have become "time is short"/carpe diem imperatives post-cancer).

So things about me are different, but upon meeting someone new, do they need to know what made me that way? Is cancer relevant, or are the actions it catalyzed? Is it a part of me, or a part of my past? And if it’s a part of my past, how to integrate the fear of its recurrence that will always be present in a degree of severity or another? To explain that in the staff meeting at work when they report on the progress of another co-worker's chemo, I have to repeat the mantra, This is not about me, this is not about me, as my heart freezes over with concrete. To have to stop watching one of my favorite t.v. shows because a character is now battling cancer. To have begun to put the gas to the floor board out of that shrieking town, and pretend I can't see it in my rear-view anymore. 

Sharing the Sandbox

It’s strange to think that one year ago at this time, I was getting ready to graduate with a Master’s Degree. All that happened since then; the joy of having my whole family, including my dad and his fiancé come out to see me; my dad getting to see me perform my final for acting class, and his commenting on how surprised and impressed he was at my performance. (And my own bits of, A little late to notice that I’m talented, but thanks.) My mom and brother witnessing me read a poem at the “Spiritual” commencement ceremony, and getting to experience what I’d been trying to do for two years in school. The positive feedback from strangers and listeners.

The bits of momentum I had then; the job hunting beginning, but not too worried. The calls with the ‘this would be so perfect for me!’ start-up arts education school and gallery… who could only pay $30k. The trolling of craigslist for apartments and roommates in New Jersey, because maybe it was time to go back. The increase in the fevered pitch of anxiety and worry about money, and jobs, and position, and location, and future, and security.

Four months of that, till I was hired where I am now, when I had literally $3.98 in my bank account at my first paycheck.

The oscillation between those moments of triumph and community, and those moments of perceived failure and desolation. The poor hard wrenching of my psyche and little heart and big ego, ending indeed in cancer.

I mean, I went to Hawaii because of cancer (and friends’ generosity). I’m working through truly old relationship patterns because I have to, because they’re here. I have formed strong friendships with people I barely knew because they showed up for me with a plate of cupcakes, a bowl of soup, a tub of pudding.

Someone told me last week that it sounded like I was postponing joy until I had a different job and job title. When, in fact, that’s backwards. The job is what it is, and will be until it isn’t. (said Alice.) But I’m the thing that can change, and I am.

Those things that brought me joy, community, and a sense of self and self-esteem last year at this time—acting, performing my work, meeting up with playful friends—those are the things that I’m grabbing back to again. My friend’s band I sang with the other week has two other gigs in June they’ve invited me to sing with. I have two writing groups set up, a softball team I’ll begin playing with in June, and callouses that please oh please I hope form soon on my poor pinky from playing my guitar again, however inexpertly.

I mean, I put videos on facebook of me singing! The thing I always have said no one knows I do. It’s time that you do.

I have a play that I’m in with a host of folks I love, and my job title is still the same.

I have to budget carefully, owing several months of backrent from when I was sick, and I proposed a monthly poker night with my friend who just moved close by.

I bought a ticket home to see a best friend get married, and I just finished chemo two months ago.

Joy can coexist next to financial insecurity, job dissatisfaction, and even debt.

I don’t think I knew this before.

And I certainly didn’t practice it.

One year ago, I was getting prepared to graduate; I had pride, a grin the size of Wisconsin, and family and friends supporting me. Truthfully, there is no reason--aside from my own stubborn curmudgeonness--that this year I shouldn't have the same. 

A Perverse Act of Gentility

Continuing to catalogue old writings, here is another of the 2004 Shayna series. Again, in deference to my younger self, editing was kept to a minimum. Therefore, judge lightly ;) Related post: "The Wave"

A Perverse Act of Gentility

Martin leaned in toward Shayna.

The scene was a common one in the months that followed their introduction. Shayna found comfort and excitement in Martin’s company, ping-ponging opinions about movies, politics, South Park. Martin was pleasantly knowledgeable, funny, and one of Shayna’s few friends at school with whom she felt she could be her true quirky self.

Mostly, they convened at his apartment, smoked pot or drank cheap wine, and watched a movie. Shayna would courteously depart some nights more quickly than others, if Martin had, as he usually did, edged toward her during the course of the movie. On other nights, Shayna would repeat into Martin’s contorted pleading eyes that she loved his company, but wasn’t interested in anything romantic with anyone at the time.

Of course, this wasn’t entirely true, but to say she found his breath odorsome, his teeth overlarge, and his physique lacking would certainly have led to an irreparable rift in their friendship, and leave her quite alone again.

This night however, Martin was not content with her excuses.

“Don’t you find me attractive?” he demanded when she pulled away.

“It’s not that,” Shayna defended, weakened by the cheap wine, most of which had emptied itself down her throat, not his. “You know that I just don’t want anything romantic with anyone right now. I love spending time with you; we have a great time. Why does it have to be different?”

“Because I like you! Because for months we’ve sat on this couch, and I’ve wanted to kiss you, and I’ve respected you enough not to.”

“Well, I appreciate your chivalry, Martin,” she attempted without sarcasm, “but that doesn’t change how I feel. It would change our friendship, and I really don’t want to see that happen.” The topic was tiresome to her--the bent truths, white lies; it drained her – is this all men wanted from her?

The look of pure, fulfilled joy on his sleeping face sickened her. She crept from his bed at the first slant of light, forgetting her rings on his desktop, and blinked into the street.

No, she hadn’t kissed Martin out of force, but rather out of exhaustion, to be rid of the topic. He'd placed his hands so gently on her body, skimming her parts.

And she was angry.

She'd compromised herself, and wanted the weight of it to be congruous with the act. If he’d ground into her, panting with lust, she’d have understood. She could easily let her pall of cheap, whoring disgust fall into an eerie abyss of disregard--it was a feeling she was familiar with.

But he hadn’t. He'd brushed over her lovingly, admiringly. And she hated him for it. For prolonging her shame with each slow touch. For distorting the act into a caricature of true feeling.

Arms folded tight against her, Shayna stalked home in humiliation and disgust for the man who’d held her like an angel. 

The Huntsman

I realized something important this morning.

I’ve had an emotional week; doing a lot of work around my dad. And in doing more exploration this morning, I found something new. Different.

On Wednesday, my therapist asked me what my vengeance needs to do to feel complete, better, satiated, heard. I paused, as it took a moment to see something; My vengeance wants for my dad to suffer as I did, to acknowledge and atone for his abusive and neglectful behavior. But, I saw just then, this is something my vengeance cannot have. It wants something it can’t have, and so, I said, what it needs, really, is to stop hunting.

It was a moment of clarity for me, to see that this thing that I’ve wanted so badly, have twisted myself and my relationship to the world, god, myself in order to bring to fruition, is a fool’s errand. It is of non-consquence. It is a quest that cannot be completed.

So, I have to help my vengeance to let go. Let go of the quest for punishment and retribution, and to accept. Accept that surrender.

This morning, I saw more than this. Behind and beyond my vengeance is something else. Because, what my vengeance wants is for my father to recognize his brutality, and to change it. It doesn’t and won’t stop at acknowledgement; I want change. I want him to heal.

I want to save my dad.

The fantasy follows as such: Because of my intervention, my father realizes his wrongs, deeply acknowledges them, atones by being remorseful and by taking actions to right himself, to heal his hurt places. Because of my actions, because of my anger, my father lives. My father is saved. Because of my indignation, he gets better.

I “like” this new uncovering. This deeper layer of meaning and intention behind my anger, because it fits with me, with who I am, and my motivations. With how I tried to behave with my mom, but that took a much different form. I wanted to do the same thing with my dad; the flip side of the coin – love/hate. Save her with love; save him with hate.

In both cases, I have been unsuccessful. Mostly because it is not my job, and I am not capable of saving or changing anyone. My mother changed because she decided to. My mother didn’t kill herself because she decided not to. It wasn’t me.

My father will or won’t change regardless of my actions. It’s time to stop hunting… but I realize only now that I have been like Snow White’s Huntsman: plotting to kill, but really intending to save.

It makes my heart grow a few sizes in my chest. It doesn’t change that I have to stop my quest and accept that my life is to be lived for me, and not in order to align with or rebel against my father’s ideologies. But it does change how I feel about myself. About my motivations. And, actually, it does make it a little easier to let go.

In the end, I love my father deeply; so much so that I have made a life’s work of being what he has wanted or not wanted me to be. I realized this love this morning.

My therapist said on Wednesday that it sounds like there are three versions of my father: the good dad (sports, camping, teaching me how to swim dad), the neglectful dad, and the angry shaming dad. The rub is that I can’t know who is on the other end of the phone when I call; I can’t direct dial the good dad.

But I can choose to let go of saving the others. 

The Wave.

I began to re-write Sunday's college class story closer to how it happened, but then I remembered I’d already written it. Amazingly, still preserved in the bowels of my desk, here is a story from my 2004 creative writing fiction class. To maintain the integrity of my 22 year old self, one year removed from the incident, I’ve tried not to edit too much… ;)

The Wave

She had written a poem about the back of his neck, and the “myopic neglect” of such, before she knew his name. She had sketched the angular side of his face from two rows back, and laughed inwardly at his witty comments to his friends beside him. The haphazard moles that spotted his neck and cheek were points of endearment, and the unwashed hair a point of character.

For two months, Shayna had pined for this film amateur, his tight black jeans and his yellow plaid shirt. There were a few – two – occasions where she’d actually looked him in the eyes while passing in the hallway, and for her, time drew in its breath and hollow echoes of the world bordered around her. Those two walking-on-water moments merely intensified Shayna’s belief that this man/boy was part of her destiny.

And so, on a late October day, before her Art of Cinema class, she approached Craig, having learned his name from the class roster they all signed. Craig was just parking his bicycle outside the building, and none of his entourage were present. Entourage was perhaps not the right word, as Craig was by no means self-important and his friends were not followers, but Shayna was always intimidated by this group, who wore shaggy hair and gads of knowledge. Especially Chloe. Perhaps 'intimidated' isn’t the right word for how Shayna felt about Chloe; it was more like bewilderment and vague dislike. Her class points were empty, and her daggers for Shayna were fat. Though never overt about her passion, Shayna sensed that Chloe had her own gravitational pull toward Craig. So that when Shayna orbited near the two of them --outside the building, leaning on the rail, comfortably smoking cigarettes—she was inclined to keep her distance.

Therefore, on this October day, Shayna grabbed the wing of Fate and approached the lone, if winded cyclist.

“Hi.” Craig looked up as Shayna continued, “I know this might sound weird, but I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get a cup of coffee or a drink sometime?” And then Shayna’s world froze…

“Um…sure.”

“I know this is awkward, I mean, I don’t even know your name,” she lied, and smiling, held out her hand. “I’m Shayna.” Craig reached forward and held the outstretched hand. She could feel the adding-machine of his brain attempting to compute who this stranger was, trying to download a person in a touch.

“Craig.” He let her hand go, but maintained the gaze that stapled her to the spot like a stuck butterfly. “Um, yeah, let me get your number,” and he slid his cell phone from a tight black pocket.

She watched him type in the numbers. “Shayna,” she repeated, confirming. Craig looked up at her and nodded, sliding the phone back. Trying to make more of the scene, but inwardly dying to escape, “So, what do you think of this class?”

“Which one?” He was grabbing a paper-bag lunch from the back of his bike.

“Belton. He’s a little… I don’t know if ‘long-winded’ is the right word…”

“I think he just takes time to put his thoughts together.” He looked at Shayna, expecting perhaps more than she had scripted.

“Yeah… Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you in there.” And Shayna turned, walking toward the entrance, unsure if she was more distraught now having actually approached Craig, feeling perhaps like a stalker, an idiot, an insecure American female. In the fog of her mind scrolled the adage: “Best to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Classes passed as they had, with Shayna sitting not too close to Craig, but within the orbit of his voice. There was little opportunity for acknowledgement on either part, because Shayna did her best to bolt from the classroom before another encounter could occur. She wanted him to call, so she could fill out the stick-figure image of herself she was sure she’d conveyed. She wanted him to call, so she could laugh aloud at the things he said. She wanted him to call, so she could etch into her memory the smell of his unwashed hair. But despite her fantasy, Shayna felt that any casual small-talk would just make her appear a foundering oddity. So, she fled, and his only image of her remained a stick-figure in motion.

One Wednesday, Shayna left the building a few minutes late. She saw through the glass-paned front door Craig and his intellectual group loitering outside, and drew in a deep breath. Craig looked up at her as she exited, and…waved. Her heart trampolined. Other members of the group turned to look at who he could possibly be waving at, and puzzled, studied Shayna. She could not brave approaching the whole seething frontal lobe, having to prove her likability – her cool factor – to their prickly group antennae, or to draw herself out in front of Chloe, standing at Craig's side like one of his moles.

So, she smiled demurely into his eyes alone, nodded, and walked into the night, leaving him to explain her relevance, or to allow his advancement to fall as an innocuous gesture to an anonymous ghost. 

Aren't you a pretty thing, What's your name ...

“And they found that once the door of willingness was open, it could always be opened a little bit more.” ~ anonymous (paraphrase)

This has been an interesting month and few weeks. 6 weeks ago I had my final round of chemo. Since then, I’ve gone back to work, been leant a car, been on a non-date date that has dematerialized to nada, bought IKEA lamps to flank my new bedframe, redecorated, written Morning Pages, been to therapies, and signed up for a softball league.

I’ve sung with a friend’s band in public, and was good enough, which is good enough for me. I contacted my school about renting music and art studio space, finally continuing a line of communication that my gmail tells me I began with them literally two years ago. I’ve noticed I stopped reading fiction, and was pleasantly engrossed with my friend’s copy of The Art of Fielding as a diversion. I’ve watch a lot of t.v. on my computer, but I’ve also noticed that my dishes are getting done more frequently, without my demanding it of myself.

It is this last bit that I am hopeful about. That without beating myself up to change, patterns that had been entrenched will simply shift, and one day, I’ll just notice they’re completely different.

There’s a lot of demand on myself following all this cancer stuff. And even though my friends gently admonish/remind me that it’s unreasonable to think that I’ll change my life and my self and my patterns when I just finished fighting off cancer, there is the great part of me that feels that it is because I have just fought off cancer that I must change all these things – and tout suite.

Because there’s the linger not only of the disappointment of accumulated years of mediocrity, -- or if I were more fair to myself, hiding -- but there’s also the imperative of the cosmic clock that cancer has installed in my being – hurry up and fix yourself, you never know if I’m coming back, it intones.

Surely, no one is skilled at getting “better” under such pressure. And so, yes, I do have to let up on myself, but that’s one thing to say, and even act, it’s another to believe. Because there is also still the idea, fiction as it may be, that if I don’t “do this better”, this life thing better, that the cancer will come back. There’s also the idea, perhaps like many of this age/generation, that life is quickly passing and I feel like I’m barely oriented to the spinning orb we’re all attached to.

“Easy does it” comes to mind. I have enough collaged reminders of the word “Relax.” But the hyper-vigilance, and perfectionism, don’t have time for relax.

One way that today I am trying to counter-balance my crazy is to write this, write my blog, which because of my work schedule, and the rest of my typical morning practice, I’ve had to skip to be to work (relatively) on time. So, I got up a few minutes earlier, to ensure I had time for this, because, as you can see, I need some outpouring of the crazy, in order to be a little emptied for the sanity.

I met with my writing group yesterday. It was only two of us this time, but it was our first meeting since cancer, so it was a welcome return to normalcy. We spoke a lot about where we were in thinking about our writing, what we had to give to it, and came to the idea that perhaps it could be fun again, instead of something that feels like another job, as she put it. To play with it, instead of be beaten by it. Sounds a lot better, eh?

This precipitated the story I wrote yesterday, which I realize, I’ll just write as it actually happened, and put up here, because there’s a real version of that story, as I’m sure many of us have, and perhaps I’m simply better at non-fiction, or maybe that real story simply should be told instead of some fantasy version where the dorky girl gets the cool guy. In the real version, I assure you, she doesn’t.

But not because he didn’t show interest, but because she (I) didn’t pursue, in fact, she tried to disappear from his notice. Which I feel is pretty emblematic of my m.o.

Hiding. The thing that underlays all of this, me. Hiding from jobs, relationships, vulnerability, authenticity.

My therapist and I came up with some phrases after some work we did last week which are meant to counteract this habit and pattern of hiding, diminishing, and, perhaps, shame.

My feelings are valid.

It is okay to act authentically.

I will be safe and protected if I do.

I am lovable no matter my feelings.

I am pretty familiar with the diminishing part/habit. There are probably some more threads to untangle, but I’m less familiar with trusting that I will be loved and cared for if I express myself authentically. I am not familiar with trusting that I will be okay. To come right down to it, I’m not familiar with trusting. To a point, sure, but beyond that, when they say a leap of faith? I’ve already hooked up my carabeener and holster, because damned if I’ll let you drop me and be disappointed again.

The biggest fear, that I’ll be tricked into trusting. That I’ll be tricked, betrayed, after I have trusted. And that I’ll be shattered from it – something I fear I won’t come back from again.

So, how do you trust, when you’re terrified? When the thing you’re supposed to learn is trust, and the only way to learn it is by trusting? How do you unhook the harness, and say, okay, I’ll play, because I am tired of being diminished, and, truthfully, I’m tired of being suspicious?